Fighting Flare

Broccoli Cheese Casserole

Forget the bird, broccoli cheese casserole is the real reason I show up for Thanksgiving dinner.  I don't even like broccoli all that much, but I love broccoli cheese casserole.  I grew up with this on my Thanksgiving plate every year, so when we switched to SCD, I knew I would have to find a way to adapt my mom's recipe or Thanksgiving would never be the same.

As it turned out, there were only two problematic ingredients in the original recipe...breadcrumbs and cream of mushroom soup.  The breadcrumbs were easy enough to leave off and as it turns out, the casserole is just as good without the mushroom soup....in fact, it's a lot less greasy.  I happen to really like mushrooms though, so I like to add fresh chopped mushrooms instead of the soup.  If you don't like mushrooms, leave them out. 

This recipe is super easy to make and can be made ahead to be baked or reheated just before dinner.  I like to double or triple this recipe because it goes fast and I REALLY like to have leftovers.  I'm not even kidding, I will gobble a whole bowl of this for breakfast.  

I'm going to share the easy version first, then I'll give you some tips to glam it up in the notes following. And FYI...this is not a "lite" version...it's still chock full of fat, which is why it tastes so good.  ;)

 

INGREDIENTS:

2 pkgs. (10 oz./ea) frozen chopped broccoli, cooked & drained well

1 large onion, diced

1 c. fresh mushrooms, sliced or chopped (optional)

1 c. mayo

1 stick butter (salty), melted

4 eggs

1 c. cheddar cheese, shredded, plus extra for topping

almond flour (optional)

 

DIRECTIONS:

Mix broccoli, onion, mushrooms, mayo, butter, eggs and 1 c. cheddar cheese in a large bowl, then pour into a shallow 8" baking dish.  Sprinkle extra cheddar over the top.  Dust with a sprinkling of almond flour if you wish.  Bake at 350 degree for 30 minutes.  That's it!

When it comes out of the oven it will be looking all toasty and fabulous...

NOTES:

If you want to glam it up, you can use fresh broccoli or a combination of broccoli, romesco or cauliflower.  Just chop and steam until tender before using.

If you are using mushrooms, you can play around with different types.  I like to use shitakes when I'm feeling fancy, but criminis are good too.  I've also used chopped black olives instead of mushrooms, but I like the mushrooms better.  You can throw them in raw or steam them with the other veggies to release a little water before assembling the casserole.

If you want to play around with onions, you can do that too...leeks are a great alternative.  The white and light green parts can go into the casserole raw, but you may want to soften any dark green parts before using by tossing them in with your other veggies to steam before assembling the casserole.

The mayo I use is Spectrum Canola Mayo, but you could also use homemade.  Spectrum is not 100% SCD legal due to the fact that it contains "lemon juice concentrate", but we've used it since starting SCD without any problems.

Feel free to switch up the cheese.  Try a white cheddar or a smoked gouda...or any combo of flavors that you like.  It's an easy recipe to tweak. 

I will link this to my Deliciously Easy SCD Thanksgiving Menu, so you can easily find it.  You can also find it under Thanksgiving on the Happy Holidays tab at the top of my blog. 

Tomorrow, I'll be sharing my SCD-legal version of Kabocha Squash "Sweet Faux-tato Casserole."  Don't miss it!!  Thanks for stopping by!  XOXO, Cindi

 

Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram | subscribe to this blog

A Deliciously Easy SCD Thanksgiving

Wahoo!  It's turkey time y'all!  Next to Halloween, Thanksgiving is my second favorite holiday of the year...because, well...food!  And guess what?  I have great news.  It's really easy to do a delicious Thanksgiving on SCD.  The only major traditional foods you have to give up are stuffing, which admittedly is tragic, and potatoes.  I haven't found a decent replacement for my mom's stuffing yet, but potatoes are an easy fix.  Turkey and the rest of the trimmings are easily adapted to SCD.

The hard part may be that you're not hosting the dinner and you're not sure if there will be anything you can eat.  Fortunately, Thanksgiving dinners are often pot-luck affairs, so chances are good, you can just bring whatever you want to eat.  And there is no rule that says you can only bring one dish.  No one will turn you away if you show up with an armful of casseroles and salads.  As a hostess, I'm thrilled when people bring extra food because that means there will be more leftovers, which means I don't have to cook the next day.  ;)

If you're not going to a potluck and you're worried that someone will be insulted if you show up with your own food, call ahead and explain the situation.  Ask if you can bring some side dishes...that way you can tweak them to your dietary needs and no one will be the wiser.  Chances are good you will not be able to eat everything that is served, but you will at least have something you know you can eat.

The exception to this would be if you're eating at a restaurant and in that case, you will need to call ahead and find out what the situation will be. Fortunately, most restaurants are used to working with food allergies at this point and should be able to help you.

If you are hosting Thanksgiving yourself, that is really the ideal situation because you will have much more control over the menu.  You may still have guests who bring things that you won't be able to eat, but at least you'll know that there will be plenty that you can eat.

So, that brings up the question of what to make??   Honestly, the possibilities are endless, but I've pulled together all of my favorite holiday receipes into one easy menu.  Whether you just need a side dish or are looking for an entire meal, these recipes are all winners.  There are options for every dietary need you can think of and I'll be sure to share adaptations when possible.  I'm posting the menu here and will link to the recipes as I share them.  I think you will be pleasantly surprised about how delicious (and easy!) an SCD Thanksgiving can be.

THANKSGIVING MENU 2014

Oven Roasted Turkey

Cranberry Sauce Three Ways

Broccoli Cheese Casserole

Kabocha Squash "Sweet Faux-tato Casserole" 

Roasted Carrots and Olives

Garlic Smashed Cauliflower (Instead of Mashed Potatoes)

Massaged Kale Salad

Dessert: TBD

 

I'd love to hear about your favorite holiday recipes and survival strategies so feel free to leave links or comments on this post or chat me up at any of the links below.  Check back soon for the recipes!!  XOXO, Cindi

Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram | subscribe to this blog

 

Photos via Tanya Lolonis on Pinterest

Sugar-Free SCD Halloween 2.0

Well, we did it!  We survived our second sugar-free Halloween on SCD and while there were some tough moments, it was so much better than last year.  We knew what to expect this time around and we were prepared.  I made plenty of SCD-legal sweets, hashed out an exciting candy trade-in plan and even found a honey-sweetened candy that my daughter could have. 

Waaaay down on the bottom of the candy wall at PCC, I found these honey sweetened peppermint patty-like candies from Heavenly Organics.  There are only three ingredients...unsweetened dark chocolate, honey and ginger extract.  It's not technically SCD-legal because of the chocolate, but we tested cocoa powder a while back and have been able to bring it back into my daughter's diet.  This was a huge score!  I thought the ginger was a bit overpowering and would love to try their other flavors, but it was a great surprise to stick in her goody bag.

We hosted our annual Halloween party on Halloween night, which was one of our best yet.  Since it was a Friday, people stayed late and we had a blast dancing into the wee hours.  I made two pots of chili, one with turkey and one vegetarian, and set out all the fixins' so people could make their own perfect bowl.  I also provided several crazy veggie trays and then asked everyone to bring some fingers finger foods to share. That way, I was sure that there would be at least one dish that everyone could eat and there would be plenty of food without me having to kill myself to get it all done.  As it turned out, most people brought SCD-legal foods anyway.

Here's my crazy eyeball veggie platter...

...and my bizarre cauliflower head veggie platter...this is what you call using your head to make veggies more fun.  ;)

A girlfriend made these wonderful little Paleo nut cups...

...and these almond butter brownie cupcakes complete with mashed banana "frosting" and cinnamon RIP details.

These are the frozen pumpkin "fudge" bars that I forgot to put out...recipe to come soon.

For drinks we had plenty of booze along with apple cider served in jelly jars and paper Halloween straws...

Here is a great shot of the potluck table and another great veggie platter... and how cute are the tangerine pumpkins??  Please note, there are edamame beans, chicken wings and some pita chips in this photo that are not SCD-legal, but everything else was.  :)

By the end of the night even my skeleton got into the spirit.

You may be wondering if we had any tears this year.  The answer to that is yes, but they actually came a few days before Halloween, but they weren't as intense as last year.  My daughter's GI also consented to her having a small amount of "real" chocolate on Halloween night as a one-time treat.  Coupled with the Heavenly Organics candy I found and the sweets we had at the party, it didn't seem nearly as hard this year.  She chose a dark mint chocoloate bar from Theo Chocolates and was allowed to have two squares.  Theo's is organic, fair trade, locally made in Seattle and very clean with only a few pure ingredients...cocoa beans, cane sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla extract and mint extracts. 

This is the last in my series of Halloween posts that seems like it's gone on FOR-EVAH.  I really think this is the hardest holiday to deal with on SCD, so I put a lot of effort into making it as much fun as possible for my little one...sharing all of that takes a lot of posts to cover.  Hopefully, these posts have been helpful and will make your next SCD Halloween a little easier.  XOXO, Cindi

Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram | subscribe to this blog

Bone-jour! The Trials and Tribulations of Skeleton Day

Halloween is generally a fun time of year at any school, but this year, my daughter's teachers took it to a whole new level.  I already shared about how they tied their Egyptian Studies in with an appropriately timed Mummy Party, but they didn't stop there.  A week later, there was a Skeleton Party in celebration of their anatomy studies in science.  As usual, I offered to provide sweets, so that my daughter wouldn't feel left out.  There were a few other parents helping with this, as well...one brought fruit cups and the other a brilliantly clever veggie platter that looked like a skeleton.  I didn't see it, but I believe it was based off this idea:

I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing, knowing my daughter would be able to eat everything, except for the fact that the teacher specifically wanted skeleton cookies as the sweet because it tied into a book they were reading.  Had to be skeleton cookies.  Truthfully, I'm not much of a baker and I loathe rolling out dough...especially nut-flour doughs because they are impossible to work with.  And on the heels of my miserable Mummy Cookie experience, this was not a project I was looking forward to. 

I decided to try a new sugar cookie recipe and add some cocoa powder to make tiny chocolate "gingerbread man" shapes, that I hoped I could pipe some kind of skeleton-looking icing onto.  I was VERY nervous about this b/c I felt like I was setting myself up for failure from the get-go.  Why do I do this to myself???  Oh yes, love....  ;)

The dough rolling and cookie cutting went better than expected and I had a huge tray of tiny little people which I stuck in the oven and promptly BURNED!  Oh yes, burned the crap out of them.  It was hard to tell how dark they were getting because they were chocolate, but when I took them out, they tasted like they had been scraped off the side of my chimney.  That lead to my making a second batch of dough without cocoa powder which I managed to bake without burning...problem was, they tasted like chipboard.  Gah!!  So, there went 5 cups of my precious blanched almond flour and several hours of my life that I'll never get back. And I was no closer to having an SCD-legal treat that I could take to this party.

It was getting late, so I ultimately decided I would call around to grocery stores the next day and just get some kind of cookies to take and would send something else for my daughter.  I couldn't let the whole class down because of my mistakes.  Well, easier said than done.  NO ONE had skeleton cookies or bone cookies of any kind.  Whaaat??  Back to the drawing board...or Pinterest, to be totally accurate.  I ended up finding a cute little bone "cookie" made from two mini-marshmallows stuck on the ends of a pretzle stick and dipped in white chocolate.  Looked easy enough, so I hit the store, got what I needed and made them just in time for the party.  But my daughter couldn't eat them, so it defeated the whole purpose!!!  I still had to send her something different.  (They did turn out pretty cute though, no??)

As an aside, I was determined to make an SCD-legal version of these cookies, so I played around when I got home and came up with a pretty good alternative.  The recipe still needs some work, but hopefully, I'll be able to share this with you in time for next year...

Now I just had to get through making cupcakes for the school Halloween party the next day...oh ya, we're moving on to school party number THREE.   But not before a visit to the ER...cause x-rays seemed appropriate on Skeleton Day.

As if my day hadn't been stressful enough, my little one somehow managed to choke on (and then swallow) a penny while I was making dinner.  This resulted in a frantic trip to the ER where they scanned her with a metal detector just like at the airport...OMG.  It got to her tummy and started beeping...I died. 

She was still wearing her skeleton pj's from Skeleton Day at school, so the nurses and doctor's could barely keep a straight face with her.  Fortunately, no lasting damage was done and we were told the penny would pass straight through with no problems.  I am guessing pennies are not SCD-legal, but it did indeed pass through.  I was laughing that night about needing to get a stool sample for my daughter's next calprotectin test and thought it would be funny if I left a note telling the lab techs they could keep anything they found in the poo...kind of like a tip...LOL!

So, that's how Skeleton Day went down.  Never a dull moment!  I will wrap up my 2014 Halloween coverage in my next post where I share some final thoughts about our annual Halloween party and how things went on Halloween night...then it's on to some new topics and some awesome recipes for the holidays.  Thanks so much for hanging out and reading along.  I love getting your comments and feedback, so don't be shy.  XOXO, Cindi

Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram | subscribe to this blog

12 Scary Good Halloween Lunches (Paleo & SCD)

Yah yah yah... I know Halloween is SO last week, but you didn't think I'd let it pass without sharing some spooky lunch ideas, did ya?   I actually intended to post this last week, but you know how life goes...I'll fill you in on all the drama in the next post.  If you follow me on Instagram, you already know I was busy crafting Halloween lunches for the two weeks leading up to Halloween, but for those of you who don't, I'm recaping my favorites in this post.

As you can see from the photos, I had a lot of fun making lunches for Halloween. I tried to plan ahead and mostly focused on the colors of the food and my trusty silicone muffin cups to keep things looking Halloween-y.  I also have a small stash of 1" cookie cutters that make quick work of slicing foods into pumpkins, bats & cats. 

You'll notice some little toys and props in some of the lunches...I collect stuff like that as I find it and hoarde it in a rarely used stock pot in the back of my kitchen cabinet...then I raid my stash when I want to add a little treat.  

You'll also notice that I was a wee bit obsessed with eyeballs this year.  Somewhere along the way I saw some cute bento picks with goofy little eyes, but they were like $6 plus $8 shipping...not gonna happen.  I made my own with plastic cocktail pics, google eyes and my hot glue gun.  Easy Peasy.

So let's look at the lunches!  This was a monster inspired lunch...the colors were inspired by the little finger puppet.  I got the idea for the apple monster mouths and the ham tongue from the geniuses on Pinterest.

This lunch is all about the eyes and vibrant Halloween colors.  We were testing mozzarella during this time, which is not SCD-legal, but made excellent eyeballs.  The eyes were inspired by this post, which uses straws to cut the little circles. I didn't have any straws on hand, so I used the end of a tiny funnel to punch a little circle in the cheese and then cut matching black circles out of black olives.  After that, it was easy to pop out a circle of cheese and replace it with the black olive.  You can easily do this with any SCD legal cheese, or other ingredients for that matter.  Colorful produce made it all really pop. (Side note: The mozzarella test was not successful...caused stomach pains and lethargy.)

This was my attempt at a "starry night at the pumpkin patch" scene.  It features a variety of foods in traditional Halloween colors of black, orange, green and yellow.  The star fruit is naturally shaped like a star, so that was fun to play with.  We also started testing rice crackers along with the mozzarella cheese, so that is what is shown under the bat cheese.  Rice crackers are not SCD-legal, but my daughter tolerates rice well and hasn't had any trouble with them. 

Here is another monster puppet inspired lunch.  I made the eyeball skewers with 3" plastic cocktail picks and giant googley eyes.  On the eyeball skewers, I speared little waffle sammie bites which are basically a ham and cheese sandwich made on waffles and then cut into little squares.  Yummy!

This is the lunch I made for Mummy Day at school.  (You can read my sob story about Mummy day and get the recipe for the Grain-Free Mummy Cookie you see in this lunch here.)  The yellow mummy-ish things in the top left are carrots with a little melted cheese...I got the idea off Pinterest (shocker!) but they were stupid.  They were fiddly to make and my daughter didn't eat them, so don't waste your time on those.  The mummy apple was another Pinterest idea, but the mummy brie bite was all mine...LOL.

More eyeballs!  And a Frankenstein rubber duck...that glows in the dark and swims in applesauce!  I made the egg eyes using the same technique as the cheese eyes and then sprinkled a little paprika around to make them look bloodshot.  The green stuff in the top left is mashed avocado with a bit of lemon juice and a sprinkle of salt. 

Sorry for the poor quality of this photo...not sure what happened.  This lunch is all about traditional Halloween icons with a brie ghost, provolone bats and cheddar pumpkins.  The eyes & mouth on the brie are black olives and the pumpkin leaves are basil, which for some reason my daughter loves to eat.

Back at it with the eye balls in this one...these are the tiny eye ball picks I made...only about an inch long. The skeleton hand was part of a pack of 4 hair clips that I got out of the dollar bin at the drug store.  I popped the clips off, gave them a good wash and voila!  I love hands coming out of the food!!

This lunch was my ode to vampires.  I used 3" eye ball pics that I made with pink eyes...whoooo ooooo.  I borrowed my color scheme from the little vampire duck...primarily black, white, red and pink with a smidge of green. The pomegranate seeds are supposed to be drops of blood.  ;)

This lunch is all about the creepy crawlies...spider rings with the rings snipped off and a plastic cockroach up the creep factor of an otherwise pretty normal looking lunch.

Here is where I totally started to lose steam...running out of ideas!  I had intended for this skeleton lunch to be much more black and white, but I didn't plan ahead and didn't really have enough to fill it, soooo...it became a hodge podge, with a skeleton finger puppet and some bone-shaped food thrown in for good measure...LOL.  The little treat in the cupcake liner is a peppermint-patty-ish treat that I made to have for post-trick-or-treating...these turned out AWESOME.  Will definitely be sharing this recipe soon because it will be perfect for the holidays too.

And, last, but not least, a zombie lunch on Halloween day to go with my little one's zombie Katy Perry Halloween costume...LOL.  The zombie finger puppet inspired the colors of black, green, pink and red. I saved up all the gross looking food I could including the moldy-looking sage derby cheese with green veins running through it, some guac and spinach feta chicken sausage.  You'll recognize the skeleton hand from a few lunches back.

That's all folks! I hope you enjoyed this post and found some ideas you can use to jazz up your lunches.  As you can see, it's really pretty fun to play with your food!  I won't lie though, I'm happy to be moving on from Halloween.   Time to come up with some fun ideas for turkey day.  ;)

If you want more information about my lunches and the lunchbox I use, check out my Planetbox Lunchbox Review and my tips for How To Pack SCD Lunches Kids Can't Resist.

Thanks for stopping by!  XOXO, Cindi

 

Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest | Instagram | subscribe to this blog